In American mythology, the western frontier was a land of wide open spaces where folks sought fortunes as trappers, ranchers, and farmers. In this more primitive region, goes the myth, life was easier, simpler, and better. In truth, the regions west of the Mississippi River shared three trends that dominated American life in the late 1800s and early 1900s: industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. And driving these rapid changes was coal. Not only did this fossil fuel spur huge changes in industry, at home, and on farms, but it changed the area’s demographics as well. The promise of good wages attracted people from around the United States, Europe, Asia, and Mexico to southern Colorado’s coalfields. Initially, most miners in the region hailed from Great Britain, Pennsylvania, and other established coal-mining areas. By 1910, though, these so-called “English-speaking” or “American” miners were increasingly working alongside boys and men of more than thirty nationalities, as well as African Americans and local Hispanos from northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

Well into the twentieth century, coal mining remained one of the most hazardous occupations in the American economy, and the coalfields of southern Colorado ranked among the deadliest. Between 1884 and 1912, more than 1,600 men and boys died while working in Colorado’s coal mines. Although coal-mine disasters such as fires and floods caused fewer overall deaths than rock or coal falls, their scale and force attracted significantly more press coverage than more routine accidents. They also generated heated political controversy. Labor unions, safety-minded reformers, politicians, mining engineers, mine owners, and the coal-consuming public all struggled in the wake of mine disasters with an unsettling quandary: Who or what was responsible for the “accidents” that periodically sent dozens or even hundreds of mine workers to their deaths? When disaster struck, how did mine workers, their families, and the coal-consuming public make sense of these events? And what organizations and institutions could best safeguard the lives of the nation’s mine workers: labor unions, state and federal governments, or the mining industry?